


recurrence

by tsunderestorm



Category: D.Gray-man
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-02
Updated: 2016-04-02
Packaged: 2018-05-30 16:51:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6432559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tsunderestorm/pseuds/tsunderestorm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alma knows his Yuu would probably consider it a curse, doomed, but he’s elated - one lifetime after another, criss-crossing into a braid of eternity, finding him in every one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	recurrence

**Author's Note:**

> a birthday present (4/2) for my girlfriend [Brittany](http://envyhime.tumblr.com/), who loves yulma more than life itself

The dissolution of Kanda Yuu goes like this: the skin of his arms, peeling back from the stigmata in the crooks of his elbows like burned leather; his chest, heart pumping blood out of cuts too numerous to name as it slows beneath his chest; seal smeared like cheap ink across death-pallor skin. He’s reached the end, finally. In the haze, he sees them. Standing side-by-side are his breathtaking once-lover and beautiful, doomed friend, hand in hand. Alma looks proud, strong; smiling that stupid smile he had always detested and the woman looks indulgent, the corners of her mouth turned up in a smile as she reaches a hand out to him.

“Yuu,” they say, voices a beautiful medley. It sounds like the tinkling of wind chimes, like the far-off peal of a church bell signalling home. “It’s time.”

Kanda lets go. He lets go of the Order, of Allen Walker, of the Earl and akuma and Mugen. It’s painless; not a numb kind of pain where his mind recognizes that his nerves are crying out in protest but he’s too near-death to care, but something different, something visceral. It feels like nothing, and he’s never felt a sweeter release.

“It’s done,” she whispers, voice becoming the Alma he’d known in this life. “Come with me.”

Kanda clasps theirs hands and walks into the light.

–

Kanda meets Alma next at the turn of the century in a beautiful Japanese garden with mossy rocks and gentle waterfalls, a peaked pavilion in the center under which he kneels for tea. He’s on edge; the hairs at the back of his neck are standing up beneath the collar of his robe. He has the briefest flash of clashing innocence and dripping ichor and shakes it away. His mind tells him that there are no akuma in sight and he remembers, faintly, a time when he had to fight for his life; how strange that must have felt. Now it is peaceful; tatami mats beneath his feet and the warmth of a teacup in his hand, the cool, vegetal smell of matcha pulling him in. There is nothing to worry about, a voice in his mind assures, and he wants to meditate on it. There is no secretive, black-clad organization pulling strings and not an akuma in sight.

There is only Alma. Resplendent in a kimono of deep purple with carefully stitched lotus flowers, she’s the only thing anyone can look at. Her face looks different; smoothness where once was a scar, round cheeks where he remembers angles, but Alma’s soul is the same. Her hands are thin with birds’ bones as they pour the tea and Kanda is fixated on that small glimpse of wrist, the flash of slender forearm. It’s not lust, no. Something far deeper. It’s an ache beyond his bones, into the very core of his soul and he knows.

“I feel like I’ve known you for a lifetime,” Alma says later, when the guests have excused themselves and dusk falls on the pond surrounding their private pavilion. “But maybe that’s just something I read in a poem, or saw in a play.”

In his last moments of shaky breath, Kanda thinks _this is what we always should have had_. Looking into Alma’s eyes, he admits what Alma has suspected all along: he remembers. “ _This is what was taken from us the last time_.”

This time, they die together, clasped hand in hand as the darkness takes them both.

–

It’s years before they meet again, but Alma knows immediately. Alma knows his Yuu would probably consider it a curse, doomed, but he’s elated - one lifetime after another, criss-crossing into a braid of eternity, finding him in every one. Over the centuries he collects each story like a chapter in a novel, a scrapbook of love with pasted pictures and memories swirling like vapor in the cosmos of his soul.

He has favorites, of course. Once he meets Yuu at a university in the United States, aloof and cold. He’s an art student; scarves trailing from his slender neck with a sort of grace Alma could never possess in that lifetime, paint stains on his pants and the faint smell of pine following him everywhere. He has a lotus tattoo on his left collarbone and birthmarks in the shape of crosses on his forearms, inexplicable.

“I know you,” Alma whispers as his nails stroke Yuu’s high cheekbone, bitten-down fingernails mapping the smooth planes of his face. His eyes are brimming with tears. “Yuu.”

He enunciates the syllable softly, letting his tongue caress it, taste it, make love to it. The name feels as familiar as his own, now; he feels like he’s been born with it carved on his heart, burned into his brain, spilling forth from nothingness with a lover’s name on his lips.

That incarnation of Yuu had been foolishly (pleasantly) romantic. He’d painted nothing but Alma for four years of an art degree: Alma, in nothing but his tattoos; Alma, deep in thought with his head bent over a book. Alma, surrounded by plants in the house they buy together when one of Yuu’s paintings sells for hundreds of thousands.

That life is one of his favorites, but death takes Yuu too soon.

–

His current life will be another favorite, he knows. They’re young again, like they were in a time of a thousand-years’ war, in a time of pain of heartache and tests with something called Innocence that Alma can barely remember, now. The details are blurring together like they never occurred, becoming less and less important. He doesn’t mind; as long as his heart knows - he’s loved Yuu in every lifetime he’s ever been given and he’ll love him for every life to come.

“Do you believe in soulmates?” Alma asks softly, fingers inching towards Yuu’s. His hands are cold, clammy, three fingers wrapped in brightly colored bandaids, but Yuu accepts them laced with his own just the same. It’s late, a cool, early-summer dusk and the sound of cicadas is a cacophony outside the window. He squeezes Yuu’s hand tight and rolls over on his side to face him, round face propped up on his hand as he gazes down at him. He’s beautiful, like he has been in every life, hair long and perfectly straight where Alma’s is wavy and unreasonable.

Yuu scoffs when Alma stares at him for too long. “You’re weird, Alma.” His hand twitches, but he doesn’t let go. “Why are you talking about that?”

Alma’s smile is a light to rival the flitting of fireless in the tall grass outside. “I read it in a book. I want to experience it for myself!”

Yuu says nothing, and for a few long moments all that exists is the synchronized sound of their breathing. Alma waits, like he’s anticipating a response, dreading a dismissal.

“Maybe we were particles of the same star.” Yuu stares at him in disbelief, hardly blinking. Alma’s eyes are sharp in the low light, catching every soft swell of Yuu’s check as he frowns in confusion, the motion of him swallowing thickly.

“Hmmph.”

“You know, before the big bang and all that? I read it in a Biology textbook someone left at the park.” Alma says, like it’s the most casual thing in the world to read a forgotten textbook. Then, after more careful thought, “I think I’d like to be an astronomer some day.”

“Be quiet, Alma,” Yuu scolds, rolling over on his mat on the floor and tucking his knees up to his chest. “You want to be something new every day.”

Alma leans over Yuu, chin nestled in the crook of his neck as he blows an obnoxious (unappreciated) raspberry before pressing his lips faintly to Yuu’s cheek. It’s innocent, sweet and childlike, and Alma is fine with that. He thinks he could die right now and not regret a thing. “I’d like to be anything, as long as you’re there too.”

Yuu is quiet for a long time, until Alma is almost asleep. The sky is a bucket full of stars spilled out on a blue-black blanket and Alma wonders idly if one of the stars has their next life waiting in it. He thinks _I love you_ before he falls asleep, knowing Yuu will mock him if says it but wanting the thought back in the universe again.

Yuu whispers, “I love you, too.”


End file.
